


Rain

by Thistlerose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rain, Sexual Content, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things can't be washed away.  Written in 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

Sirius was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, naked.

“Aren’t you worried,” Remus asked, unbuttoning his mackintosh, “that Kreacher will see you? Or your mother’s portrait?”

“He’s already mad,” Sirius said. “And she’s already dead. I always wanted to run starkers around the house. I never got to as a kid.”

Remus looked at Sirius wryly, concentrating on the unshaven jaw, the hollow cheeks, and the blood-shot grey eyes. His black hair fell in tangles down his back, the ends disappearing in the shadows, making it seem as though he were wearing a hooded cloak, or floating on the surface of the house’s watery gloom.

Remus chose his words carefully, and spoke them lightly. “Considering you’re fulfilling a lifelong ambition, you don’t seem terribly happy. What if someone came by? Someone else, I mean.”

“You’re the only one who ever comes to see me. Nobody even writes.”

There was a petulant note in Sirius’ tone, but Remus chose to ignore it. Sirius knew that Harry was busy with school, and that no news from him or from Dumbledore was probably good news. Remus began to shrug out of his mackintosh.

Sirius stopped him. “Wait,” he said, catching Remus by the wrist and sliding his hand up his arm to his shoulder. Sirius pressed closer and Remus felt him shiver. He saw the gooseflesh even in the dimly lit corridor.

“What are you doing?” Remus muttered. Sirius’ hair tickled his lips. “It’s cold, and you’re naked. Let me get undressed first.”

But Sirius stood flush with him, bunched a fold of the mackintosh in his fist, and would not move. “I want to feel the rain,” he said, his voice muffled against Remus’ shoulder. “I haven’t felt the rain in months.”

“You’re welcome to it. You could open a window,” suggested Remus. “And stick your arm out. It’s pissing rain.” He put his hand on the small of Sirius’ back. “Come on,” he said. “If we’re going to be this close, I don’t want all these layers on.” Under his palm, Sirius felt slick and cold. “Come on.”

A few minutes later, Remus found himself in Sirius’ bedroom, his clothes in a soggy pile on the floor by the bed. Sirius lay beneath him, his hair strewn across the pillows, his face turned toward the open window. His eyes were rainwater grey. He had not said a word since they had come in from the corridor, and Remus might have wondered if Sirius really wanted him there were it not for the way his body responded when Remus touched him.

Remus splayed his fingers over heated flesh, and Sirius inhaled deeply. Remus watched the ribs stretch under the pale skin, watched the black prison tattoos writhe. He moved his hand again, and Sirius expelled his breath with a small, helpless sigh.

To Remus, the tattoos looked more like tracks left by talons than sigils. He never touched them, though he knew he couldn’t hurt Sirius by doing so. He never spoke about them because Sirius did not. He dreamed about them occasionally, but in his dreams he was the one the wardens of Azkaban held down and branded, not Sirius. The Azkaban in his dreams looked more like the offices of the Werewolf Registry than a prison, and Remus always woke wondering if Sirius had struggled as violently against his tormentors as Remus had as a boy.

That was another thing he never spoke of to Sirius; in this instance, he did not want the truth.

Besides, Remus thought gently, it was unimportant. All the truth he needed was sprawled beneath him, white-limbed and hollow-eyed, breathing jerkily, long fingers curling in the sheets. Sirius smelled like rain, chafing wind, dirt, damp fur, and iron bars. He smelled nothing like Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

 _Why is that?_ Remus wondered, as he bent over Sirius and kissed the pulse at his throat. _I don’t understand it, but perhaps it’s not important, either._ He rubbed his cheek against Sirius’ stubble. Sirius rumbled softly beneath him.

Sirius wanted to feel the rain, Remus remembered. He kissed Sirius’ throat again, straightened, and leaned toward the window.

“What’re you doing?” Sirius muttered.

Remus cupped his hand, collected a palmful of rain, and carried it carefully back to the bed.

“What are you doing?” Sirius asked again impatiently. “Fuck this, Remus. Just fuck me already.”

“I’ll fuck you,” Remus promised. “Just wait.”

Sirius’ teeth flashed in the gloom. “Something I’m good at.”

“Don’t be an arse. And no, you’re not good at it.”

Sirius’ grin became a leer. “If you don’t get me off, I’ll get myself off, and you’ll just have to watch.” He arched his bony hips and spread his fingers against his belly, just above the trail of short black hairs.

Remus considered informing Sirius that what he threatened was hardly punishment. Remus was hard enough; he could come just thinking about Sirius stroking himself. He tucked the vision away in his mind, to be used later when he was alone and lonely, and in need of warming thoughts.

“Just wait,” he told Sirius again. He dipped two fingertips into the rainwater he still held, and then brushed his fingertips along the inside of Sirius’ thigh.

The air vibrated as Sirius shivered. Remus felt it from the skin of his hands to his groin. He swallowed, bent lower over Sirius, wetted his fingers again, then flicked droplets over Sirius’ belly and chest.

Sirius hissed like hot metal when the droplets struck him. The hiss might have been of pleasure or frustration. With Sirius’ head flung back and his face hidden by his hair, it was impossible to tell. Both were equally likely; Sirius’ moods turned on a knife’s edge these days. Aware of the risk, Remus continued to flick water at him, targeting his nipples, his navel, and the taut skin over his hipbones.

When the water was gone, Remus climbed on top of Sirius, straddled his thighs, and put his hands, palms-down, on his chest, masking the ugly tattoos. He pushed against Sirius, the friction of their cocks sending flames shuddering through him. He shifted slightly and lunged again, exerting greater pressure.

 _”Yes”_ , he grunted. He was glad to let his mind go, glad to let the rainy, windy, dirty scent of Sirius fill him and carry him away from this place, away from his duty to the Order. He felt sharply human, and aware of all the things that made him so. He had long legs, and knees that bent just so he could straddle Sirius like this. He had a flat, hairless belly for their cocks to slide against. He had ten fingers to flex and curl against Sirius’ chest, nails he could dig into his flesh without fear of drawing blood. He had a human throat and a human voice, and he would use them to shout Sirius’ name when he came.

But before he could, Sirius grabbed his wrists and squeezed them hard. “Look at me,” he growled. “Open your eyes and move your hands.”

Remus teetered on the brink. He wrenched himself back, and blinked down at Sirius. He seemed far away below him, a black and white smudge in a grey haze.

“Look at me,” Sirius said again. “And get your hands off me.”

Too dazed to ask questions, Remus tugged his wrists free and pulled back. Red wheals marred Sirius’ chest and throat, and his tattoos stood out like scorch marks.

Sirius said tonelessly, “You can’t wash anything away, Remus. You can’t cover anything up.”

“I wasn’t,” Remus began, but Sirius grabbed his wrists again and yanked him forward, so they lay chest to chest. Remus recoiled, certain he felt the tattoos crawling off Sirius’ body and onto his own.

Sirius held him. “Fuck me,” his voice grated against Remus’ ear. “That’s the only thing you can do.”

~*~

Later, Remus lay awake while Sirius slept curled against him. It was easy to love Sirius while he slept, Remus thought. The walls came down then, and the knives were put away. Not that a sleeping Sirius was utterly weaponless. He looked like a tangle of driftwood and seaweed with seashell eyelids; the little beauty that remained to him cut deeply into Remus’ heart, but it was soothing to know he could hurt this way after so many numb years.

While Sirius slept, Remus traced words and pictures on his skin. He wrote their real names and their nicknames. He drew moons and stars interlocked, and a pair of lumpy creatures, which he whimsically told himself were a wolf and a dog. Occasionally, Sirius’ lashes twitched and he whuffed softly, but he did not wake.

Remus pretended that his finger was a quill, and that Sirius’ body was an unmarred canvas with room for all the words and stories that Remus could never tell him. He pretended that the things he wrote and drew sank into Sirius’ skin, burrowed beneath the tattoos, the bitterness, and the wasted years, and wrapped like talismans around his bones.

Sirius was wrong, Remus thought, about the rain and about his intentions. Rain could rejuvenate, and it could be a bloody nuisance. It could wash some things away, like prison grime and dust from the road. Other things were proof against the most violent torrents. Brands, Remus thought, combing back Sirius’ hair, and staring at his chest and throat until his eyes ached. And love, too. If twelve years could not wash away the love Remus felt for the man in his arms, neither could a tempest.

Neither could Sirius’ mercurial temper, Remus thought with a wry smile. He kissed a corner of Sirius’ mouth, and laid his cheek against his shoulder. He would still be here in the morning, when Sirius woke, long after the rain had ceased falling.

02/11/05


End file.
